I saw this big girl at Farm Sanctuary last weekend (the woman pictured is a stranger; I wanted her in the photo to show scale). I didn’t know pigs could be this big, then I learned that they’re usually slaughtered before they reach full size. This one is almost 1000 pounds, and gentle as a manatee.

She escaped the fate of most modern breeding sows, who are treated like piglet-making machines until their productions slows, at which point they’re slaughtered.

Here are some more porcine acquaintances I made over the weekend. They generously let me into their home and even let me lie in their beds.

All the pigs in this particular barn were fine with being touched. They looked and felt like pink elephants: thick, wrinkled skin with bristly hair. And their snouts that were more expressive than their eyes.

We’re just back from Farm Sanctuary’s annual hoe-down (lots more on that to come). It took just under five hours to get up to the Finger Lake region of New York State from Brooklyn, and I don’t want to tell you how many it took to get home. The drive back was cursed from the very beginning, though, by something that happened 20 minutes after we left the B&B.

Michael was driving down a woodsy road and I was telling him about a speaker at the conference, Jeremy Rifkin (author of The Empathic Civilization). He had said that humans are hardwired for empathy but that if humanity is going to survive, we need to extend our empathy to the planet itself and all the other creatures on it. The window of opportunity is small and we have to rush to get ourselves to this more evolved place.

The idea was hanging optimistically in the air as a squirrel ran right in front of the car. Before we even knew what had happened, we felt the sickening little thud of death.

I covered my face with my hands and screamed two words in my head over and over: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Michael said fuck very forcefully a couple of times before he pulled onto the shoulder, by which time I was sobbing.

“All it was trying to do was to get from here to there, just like us,” I wailed. “It had a life and it shouldn’t be dead and we can’t take it back.” I stayed on this theme for awhile.

As I calmed down a little I said two other things to Michael, one of which one made perfect sense: “I’m sorry it happened when you were driving.” (The obvious corollary: I’m glad I wasn’t driving.) The other statement was a little less rational: “I’m glad it wasn’t a deer or fox or rabbit. I think I’d be much more upset.”

Michael let me cry for a time and then suggested we do something to mark the squirrel’s death.

He’s a good man. Here’s what he said:

“Squirrel.” He paused for about fifteen seconds. “We’re terribly sorry about what just happened.” Another pause. “We’re sorry you had to live in a world full of unnecessary dangers and that your life was cut short for no good reason. Amen.”

Then we got back on the road.

Here’s what you see when entering the “farm” area of Farm Sanctuary (as opposed to the “People Barn” and surrounding cabins). Ever see a sign like this in a zoo?

The animals at the farm have been rescued from unimaginable violence and neglect. They now live in a sanctuary, in the most literal sense of the word: a sacred or inviolable place of refuge. Here, humans get it right.

When I’m not pontificating here, I write and edit books and magazines for kids. In 2006, as part of a preschool non-fiction series, I wrote My First Book About Farms, in which Professor Grover takes Elmo on a learning tour of farms, showing red barns, white fences, rolling hills, big haystacks, hayrides, hardworking farmers in overalls, and the obligatory photo of a cow being milked by hand. Grover even plays the role of “Old MacGrover” for awhile.

I did a few things right. I kept meat out of the picture, for the most part. I included information for parents about farmers’ markets. I explained how a lot of people work very hard to get food “from the farm to your plate.” I said that some cows were milked by hand but many are milked by machine. I included lots of big farm equipment like tractors and bailers, which kids—especially the boys—love.

But in general, looking through it now, knowing what I know about the reality of American farms, I feel I owe my readers an apology.

I’m sorry that the book, while informative and engaging, only represents the reality of about 2% of American farms. I’m sorry these farms are disappearing because our government subsidizes the factory version of farming rather than the real version. I’m sorry that I presented the story of where our food comes from in a ridiculously sanitized, almost mythical, way. I’m sorry that I contributed one more bucket of white paint to the ginormous vats used for whitewashing—covering up the truth about our food sources.

Beyond the book falling short, I’m sorry that there just isn’t an age-appropriate way to explain corn subsidies, bloated government bureaucracies, our society’s dependence on oil, the role of the corporation in our society and economy, or the sorry state of the school lunch program.

The “sorrys” get bigger: I’m sorry there isn’t much out there that teaches kids how to critically view advertising, read labels, or resist marketing targeted at the soft innocent center of their developing minds. I’m sorry there isn’t an easy way to break the news to kids that hens just like their favorite Little Red Hen spend their lives in cages so small they can’t stand up or turn around. I’m sorry that the food pyramid, taught so earnestly in their classrooms, is simply the result of agribusiness lobbying efforts.

Consider this blog the adult version of the book.